


aureal

by aerialbots



Series: constellations [3]
Category: Transformers (Bay Movies), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Cybertronian Civil War, Gen, Gestalt (Transformers), Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Missing in Action, Teambuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 04:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5525264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerialbots/pseuds/aerialbots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Someone asked me what home was and all I could think of were the stars on the tip of your tongue, the flowers sprouting from your mouth, the roots entwined in the gaps between your fingers, the ocean echoing inside of your rib-cage."</i> -- E.E. Cummings.</p><p>On things lost and found, and the difficulties of grieving properly when death is such a flexible term.</p><p>(Or, a study in gestalt bonds, and all that they entail.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	aureal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Atalan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalan/gifts), [akisawana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisawana/gifts), [lostandtold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostandtold/gifts), [Spacecarrots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacecarrots/gifts).



> In Which The Author Attempts To Fill Every Gestalt-Related Plot Hole In Michael Bay's 'Transformers' With Judicious Application Of Stubbornness And Headcanons, also known as "first of all, fuck you, second of all, _just what in the fuck did you do to my babies_ ".
> 
> Dedicated to akisawana with a tiny and surprisingly well-behaved Slingshot, to Atalan with about fifteen apologies for my utter inability to reply to emails in a timely fashion, to lostandtold with all of the love, and to Spacecarrots with the mental image of Adam Parrish secretly reading Transformers fanfiction. Merry Christmas, y'all!

"So you're like the twins, right?", your assigned human asks, leaning over the railing to watch you browsing for an alt. The question is strange enough to give you pause, unexpected enough that it makes you turn to stare back, even though you know it to be rude amongst humans.

In any case, you reason, he's the one who did it first.

You're a _coalescent_ , not a binary of five. You've never had to explain this to anyone -- not in this life, at least, not that you remember -- and now you're faced with the need to do as much, you find you have no words for it in any of your human's languages.

The pilot waits, curious and expectant. Seconds pass, slow and infinite, and yet words still refuse to come.

"Something like it, yes", is what you settle for, in the end, because it's better than just repeating yourself.

 

 

You make planetfall near the coast of Baja California, water all around you and seasong in your audios. Later, you'll find out these are not submarines, they're _whales_ , but at the time the only thing you can feel is relief that you made it, and that you're no longer alone.

Your brothers are not far from you, but Slingshot is the only one who can do VTOLs, and so you shake yourself into root mode and start towards the shoreline, a beacon pulling the others in your wake. Fireflight keeps getting distracted by schools of fish, his processors a hundred places even if his frame can only occupy one at a time; Skydive is quietly worrying about the Protectobots, wondering if they've made fall yet, though he knows already it isn't likely. Air Raid is furthest away, shepherding the rest your brothers towards you with his usual open subtlety, even as he picks and pulls at the threads of this planet's Grid -- _World Wide Web_ , he informs you, and Slingshot's amusement curls under and around your shared sentience, gentling as he thinks of how Groove will like the alliteration. _Dorky dork_ , Fireflight sing-songs, and it steals a smile from Skydive.

 

 

You should've left the words to Slingshot, you think, possibly a bit despairingly; on patrol halfway around the planet, your brother snickers at you.

The more your human knows, the less he understands.

"But how can you live with it?", he asks, a tilt to his head and a frown in his voice, his eyes raised high to look at you. He has sisters and brothers, your little pilot, two and one, but he knows not what you keep trying to explain, different words every few rotations. You're running out of synonyms, growing weary of this language that refuses to weave into starsong no matter which way you bend it, these organics who have no words for the light of your spark. "The ties, and the noise?"

 _How can you not?_ , you think, a little too desperately, and it's only until his movements slow, considering, that you realise you've spoken out loud.

 

 

It's far past sundown when you reach the shore, the stars shining increasingly bright above the sea surface, blazing as you finally break away from the ocean.

The sky is sweet, sweet, sweet, the air warm after so long underwater, and the atmosphere is thicker than Cybertron's own, just enough to feel strange and pleasant around your plating when you take flight again.

Air Raid's still feeding you morsels of data, this world's history and science and languages spun into glass candies for you to melt into your systems, quiet as you think.

Then he pauses, and sends something only your way.

You hide the way you falter mid-air by spinning through a cloud bank, then just close enough to Fireflight for your field to brush against his own, and for him to decide this is clearly a sign you wish to race.

He can tell what you're doing, even if he doesn't know the reason. He still helps you pretend, for no one's sake except your own.

 

 

"So I've been thinking", just-call-me-Graham-fuck's-sake-mate says, his tone reminiscent of nothing as much as Slingshot, and you are instantly wary -- you love your brother, wholly and unthinkingly, but you'll also be the first to admit he's a slagheap when he gets something into his head. "We could have a race."

Your words tangle into a laugh like poorly coordinated dancers. You still manage to say, "No."

The pilot's eyes widen, brows pulling closer and higher, and you're not sure what his face is doing but he looks terribly, painfully sad.

 _I grew up with Skydive thrice_ , you think, just the faintest bit amused. _Try harder._ "Still no."

His sad look crumbles, but the pout seems to become genuine, at least. "Aw, _c'mon_ , why the hell not? You've seen me fly, you know I could take whatever stunts you pull."

As if on cue -- which they are, the snoops, even if they'd already been playing -- Slingshot and Air Raid fly by, a living, weaving tangle of laser-fire and plasma, shifting into and out of altmode mid-air entirely unnecessarily and almost too fast to perceive, the mock fight dirty and vicious and _mean_ , unless you happen to know your brothers are laughing themselves silly, still giddy and hyper after so long following that beacon through deep space.

They are also not even flying at a third of their top speeds, let alone yours.

You look at your pilot, wings tilted with mirth, even if you feel the need to keep a stern face until you know the point's gotten across. "No."

Graham blinks up at the blur of white and red and blue, then the pointedly empty space left behind them when Slingshot shoots away, Air Raid hot in pursuit. "Yeah, no."

 

 

He's been missing for nearly an era. There's no reason to believe that... No. The possibilities are too low. It's too unlikely, even were Air Raid's findings true.

And yet, you find yourself longing.

 

 

"What's this one mean?", Graham asks, tracing the glyphs on your cheekguard with tiny hands and even smaller fingertips. Your brothers have teased you about your pilot's closeness, about your welcoming it so openly after the initial awkwardness, but you don't mind. Air Raid won't tell, but you know you'll only have secrets until the next time you combine. This is easier.

Your spark skips a pulse anyway, like a murmur. "Fire."

He gives you what Saporta has repeatedly called 'the stink eye'. "You know I meant the full meaning. I'm trying to learn here, if you don't mind."

Oh, but you do, you _do_. And yet, part of you also wants to tell the story. "It means... It would be 'fire in the sky'. The trail a heavenly body leaves in the atmosphere as it makes planetfall."

He looks at you for a long moment, as though willing something to click into place, then says, "And that one?"

Your control over your field falters, just for a second, but it's strong enough for Graham's skin to break into goosebumps. It's only rarely that you'll refuse him knowledge, but in this, with this, you shake your head, just enough to dislodge his hand, to allow you to step back. "Later, maybe."

_My life my spark my sky my **love** \--_

 

 

You came to Earth for the beacon, to this little island base for Prime, but once you arrive it's Ratchet you flock to, all but tackling him to the ground in a cluster of wings and limbs and singing, soaring electromagnetics. He grunts under your combined weight, grumbles about immaturity and crazy Seekers and Primus knows what else, but there's warmth in his voice when he smiles at you, and his hand curls gently over the back of Slingshot's neck as he lets himself be enveloped in the messiest, most needed group hug of his life.

 

 

Little by little, you stray further north with every flight back from patrol. Graham notices, you can tell, but he won't say anything about it, and this is what you don't quite understand, considering how serious he is about all his questions. Your brothers are quiet, too, because while there's no way for them to know your mind unless you combine, there's no mistaking the particular strains of longing reaching out from your spark, hoping against hope.

 

 

It came thousands of years ago, your final communication, and yet you know you'll never be able to forget it: the flash of white and blue, the _pain_ , a trail of smoke and fire following as he fell, fell, _fell_ \--

You'll never forget how quiet it was afterwards. It hasn't changed ever since.

 

 

The thing about being coalescent, especially during war, is that you never get used to feeling bereft, no matter what happens. You never really learn to deal with loss.

You've been alive far longer than you've been this form of self; you've felt your brothers nearly be torn from you, and felt your bond to them stretch until it was so thin you could barely hold on to existence. You've known death -- or at least a form of it -- with every reformat, even if you can only access the memories through the glimpses Superion will let you see, but you've never lost _them_ , for losing one of them would literally kill you all. Never, in any of your lives, have you known what it is to be alone.

You lost him, however, and this is what still makes you falter on occasion, clumsy and brittle for all the empty spaces he left in his wake, all the spaces even your brothers can't fill completely. Rationally, you know nothing can kill you -- not permanently, not at your most fundamental, at least -- as long as your brothers are alive, as long as someone can stabilise you soon enough that your sparks will keep each other from dissipating. And yet the awareness of something so quintessential having been torn from you without you dying from it keeps you awake at night, folded into yourself, too still and too quiet under your brothers' forms, somehow both numb and aching in silence.

Your bond had been stretched too thin for you to sense each other accurately, by then, for you to really know what happened. He could be alive, he could be dead, he could be in stasis. You know this; the thought's been your constant companion for almost an era.

It's the uncertainty, you think, that makes it all so hard to bear, and even harder to accept.

You watch Graham thumb the screen of his phone, where a dark-skinned woman grins back at him, frozen in time, and you think back to some of his first words to you, the same way you've been doing as of late.

Binary, he called you, and you can't help but think that maybe that's really what it was. You were a binary in the same way he and his partner are, the same way Air Raid was, before the war, the same way Slingshot and Skydive will be again, once the Protectobots arrive. The way Fireflight is, even if you don't talk about it, even if the awareness that Starscream's trine is on Earth makes him ache unless he keeps himself distracted.

"It means ' _song_ '", you say, all of a sudden. Graham doesn't startle visibly, but his eyes are surprised for a moment as he looks at you from the railing -- just for a moment, before flicking to the symbols in your cheek spars he touched weeks ago. You can't bring yourself to return his gaze yet, and glance towards the hangar doors instead. It is raining. " _'Lifesong'_ , more specifically. There was... the way our language works, by modifying a single glyph you can get _’sparksong’_ , which is the pull resonant sparks make on each other, or... Or _'lifesong'_ , the pull of stars on heavenly bodies. Gravity. We tend to have romantic notions about the stars -- most of our early myths said that's what the first sparks had been, before Primus gave them bodies, so it made sense for the words to seem the same."

This is the most you've ever talked without him prompting you first; he must know there is a point to it, because he doesn't interrupt you.

"You asked if we were some sort of binary", you continue, more quietly, forcing yourself to meet his eyes. "And we aren't, at least not with each other. But... I was once part of one, in a way. We call it being bonded."

You finally dare to look his way, but Graham doesn't seem surprised. Just... considering.

"So... Fire, was it?", he asks, thumbing the edges of his phone, the screen long gone dark.

Your wings tilt back, barely, and you shake your head. " _Skyfire_. He was an explorer. Deep space Seeker, bigger than me." Your mouth pulls up slightly at a corner, bittersweet and melancholy. "Lifesong's the wrong term for it, really. It should've been _'spark'_ , if he wanted to get specific, but... well. He had a different type of romantic notions about the stars."

Graham grins, eyes crinkling at the corners. It's soothing to see, somehow. "Didn't take you for a romantic."

"Neither did I", you admit, your own smile becoming softer, sweeter. "Until I met him."

 

 

You talk about it with Ratchet, a couple of rotations after arriving to Earth.

You ask about him, almost embarrassed to still hope, yet too desperate not to. Ratchet's unit had had Jazz, still had Prime, and out of everyone left, they more than anyone had the best chance of knowing what had been of him.

The answer doesn't surprise you, but it doesn't really help, either.

"There were only a few left, following Megatron and the AllSpark", he explains, gentle in a way that can only mean there are no good news to give. "We know what happened to most of them, but..."

"But there is nothing of him", you finish quietly. He only nods, and you hesitate for a moment, wondering whether it's worth mentioning. "Air Raid found... he says there are strange signals near the place Megatron was first discovered. The humans don't have equipment fine enough to tell, but..."

He tilts his head. "You think it's his distress beacon?"

"I think I want it to be", you confess, the admission like ground glass in your mouth. And yet... "I can't know unless I check, though, can I? And I won't ever have peace until I know for sure."

Your mentor smiles, small and sad, fond in a way you've only known from a handful of people in this lifetime. "I'm quite aware you're too stubborn for anything else, yes."

It's as resigned as it is accepting; it's as close to approval as you're ever going to get.

 

 

Graham leans back against the railing, uncaring of the height he'd fall from, were something terrible to happen. He trusts you to catch him, apparently, which is... odd, coming from a human, or at least anyone you haven't known for a couple of centuries. You don't think you mind it very much.

"Y'know", he begins, head turning slightly to look at you with pale blue eyes, sharp under the lazy heat of midsummer in Diego Garcia. "I got talking to Air Raid, the other day. You ever see the aurora?"

Your spark spins faster, for a moment. You think, probably a little whimsically, that he may be even more like your brothers than you thought before. Maybe this is why Ratchet wanted him for your partner. "On Cybertron, yes. But they were very different from the captures I've seen of your own."

"Hm", he says, just this thoughtful little noise, hands still working a square of cloth over the disassembled pieces of his weapon, careful and methodical. Casual. "Well, I've leave in two weeks. What do you guys say to a holiday?"

 

 

This is the memory that keeps you together: happiness in flashes of every colour of the spectrum, the sound of affectionate bickering all around, Fireflight's laughter coming down like rain as he dances with his new bondmate.

This is what you cling to: Twin blue suns smile at you behind Starscream's wing, catching your optics from halfway across the gardens, the distraction of love never fading enough for it not to make you dizzy with joy. Your best friend pulls a face, but his field is amused against your own as he watches you smile back, spark soaring.

This is what haunts you: your dreams are never from your point of view.

 

 

The north is colder than you imagined, but nothing compared to the more distant depths of space, or even some parts of Helex during the dark seasons. You remember the clockwork precision of the mid-rotation snowstorms, the acid rain turning into crystals and slush over the northern hemisphere -- can even nebulously recall the fizzly sticky-sharp slide of it over Superion's stronger shields, rather than your own, on the times you absolutely had to cross the region during bad weather.

Superion stirs at this, never quite dormant, but neither entirely clear, and a flash of memory shoots across your shared sentience -- a slightly smaller presence, kinship and curiosity and snatches of conversation that are more of a feeling than the recollection of words, the quiet pleasure of a trusted companion flying at your wing.

Something jostles you suddenly, though you couldn't pinpoint what it was, were you asked. The movement shifts Graham awake.

 _Turbulence_ , you think.

"Bolt?", he says, sits up slowly on your pilot's seat. His blanket's fallen to the floor, and he puts a hand over the console at your front, the other curled around the armrest. "You still here with me?"

Of course you are, he's in your cabin.

"Silverbolt?"

Why is he even asking?

"Silverbolt, you're shaking."

 _It's just turbulence_ , you think again, except the sky is clear as can be. There's a terrible noise in the air, an agonised keen you've not heard since the fall of Altihex; there's the startling realisation that it's coming from you.

_\--up in the clouds, laughter falling like rain, lovers and beloved all safe before the towers fell, a flash of blue and white and smoke--_

_Come_ , Fireflight says very gently, just as Graham locks his phone again. _We'll do a trade-over._

 

 

That last dawn you held each other with crumbling white cities still fresh in your mind, with the memory of a hundred thousand voices crying at the stars in anguish, of your brother's shattered spark as you held him from flying at a broken promise, of smoke and laser-fire all hanging between you.

 _Please don't go,_ you didn't say, but you knew he knew anyway, just as he did every other part of your being -- just as he did not want to leave you behind, either -- but you had long gotten used to breaking little pieces of yourselves for the sake of the greater good. You thought of blue and purple and red, instead, of a sharp-faced insignia and faces that were no longer familiar, of never getting the chance to ask someone to stay, of a brother's screams and another's catatonia.

He didn't flinch, but you didn't need it to feel his anguish, to immediately backtrack, ripples smoothing in your mind. You shut your optics, held on tighter, apology and indulgence both.

Selfish, to be hiding with the very thing two parts of your spark had only just lost. Love would make monsters of you all, or maybe that was just you.

A hand on your chin, only barely trembling from a lack of fuel and an excess of grief, but his optics, oh, somehow they could always put you back together. "I love you", he said, rather than just thought, and half a lifetime later you could still recall his fingers delicate against your face. "Don't you ever--" A kiss, like falling into the atmosphere, like stars going nova, like the desperation of rebirth, like your hands on his, like his own carefully shaking around you. "I _love you_ , and it'll never be just you."

 

 

You're a myriad of tiny pieces. Not all of them form the whole of you anymore, and this is something you have gotten used to, by now, turned into a shell of deflection and deceptively sharp edges. Biting words from old friends don't hurt you any longer, no matter how hard Starscream tries whenever you fight each other.

This, however, is a different matter altogether.

There isn't even a thought about Superion apologising -- you are not him, but you are his and you are _of_ him, and deliberately hurting you would be about as logical as you hurting one of your brothers. You know he meant well. Graham won't go until he's assured you're fine, however, despite Fireflight's prompting for him to switch to his cabin, and you don't really want to make him, either. So you land and transform around him, ever-so-careful, the clear crystal of your cockpit letting him see the endless white surrounding you all, a flock of lost, tall beings. At least you have stopped shaking.

"Tell me", he says, not quiet, but kind.

You do.

 

 

Everything is cold, since it happened, cold and dark and quiet, the numb electric feel of not quite slipping offline -- of, weirdly enough, the half-consciousness of combining.

Recharging is a small death, an endless kaleidoscope of tiny reminders, and an unexplainable drop of temperature the moment you go offline, which only your siblings' nearness can keep at bay, has turned you into the first insomniac of your species.

No one has said his name to you in nearly half an era, not even _Starscream_ , and sometimes, when you first come online, you nearly forget why.

You just want to stop _wondering_.

 

 

You're quiet for a long while, after. Your brothers wait, distant, patient. Graham traces circles over his phone. "What about Air Raid?"

He's clever enough Ratchet likes him; the question doesn't surprise you. Answering is still like tearing open an old wound. "Airazor died during the fall of Altihex. It was... it's the reason we became Autobots. Air Raid knew the moment it happened." You all knew, really. But he was the one who nearly offlined from the agony of it.

"And you?"

You spread your wings, slowly, then pull them close again. Weigh your words. Keep yourself from trembling. "I didn't. Never have."

Graham nods. His fingers drum over the screen, once, then stop around it. "We've about forty minutes to your coordinates." You listen, quiet, spark spinning faster, or maybe stopping altogether. You can't really tell. Graham glances out your canopy, measuring his words. Bits of possibility, bittersweet like rust candies. "Leave lasts two weeks. We don't have to go today, if you don't want to, or even do it at all. We can return to Diego, or come back tomorrow, or come back next year. It's your choice."

You exhale very quietly. Your vocaliser doesn't work for a moment, and you reset it, hope and dread and the desperate need of two thirds of a lifetime weighing on you. You remember his thumbs over a static smile, cling to it like the edge of an abyss. "When we go back, can I meet yours?"

A puzzled second, then understanding. Graham doesn't smile, not in the frailness of this moment, but his free hand presses over the wall opposite your canopy, towards your spark. "Her name is Hannah", he says. "And of course you can."

You shut your optics. "Very well."

Words aren't necessary, after that. Your brothers are sure the moment you are.

 

 

Life is measured in flashes: Ratchet’s wry comments, the steel in his voice; Sodalis Prime addressing her guard for the last time, her optics the darkest of reds; Skydive’s hands holding desperately onto Air Raid, a burst of pain and nonsensical data piercing through your bond; your brothers’ grins, pride and affection all around you; the threads of Starscream’s rare, delighted laughter; Slingshot bumping your side gently after landing, reassurance and approval at once; Perceptor singing, thinking himself alone; chasing Fireflight through the Sonic Canyons, sparks soaring as one; the slow song of the stars beckoning you home, closer, to the one place you felt complete.

Optics bluer than the sky, bluer than the stars, bluer than blue.

Warmth, for the briefest of moments.

 

 

It’s like a shot to the spark.

(You would know. It’s what killed you last time.)

 _Stop, stop, stop_  ,“ ** _STOP_** ”, says someone, and you don’t know if it’s your voice or your voice or your voice, you don’t know but you need to--

“ _Graham_ ”, you croak, but he’s already shoved himself as close to your console as he can -- the safest, really, considering your current state -- and you transform around him again, messy and stumbling and nothing matters, nothing, because he’s fine and your hands are whole again and you need-- you need--

_Here, here--_

_Dive, scan--_

_It’s not-- we’re too close--_

_What the slag, it’s all over the place--_

_Here, here, here--_

“Fuck _this_ ”, Slingshot snarls, and you barely have enough time to react -- to retreat -- before the click of hydraulics and the whine of plasma cannons charging--

The ground swallows you whole. It’s slightly terrifying, the idea that something big enough to hold you in exists under the surface of such a tiny planet, or it would be if you could focus on anything but the way your spark is going nova in your chest.

“Slag-- Bolt, fucking _stop_ for a second, there’s a chasm over there and you’re going to fall to our deaths”, your brother snaps, hand tugging your shoulder back before either of you can even shake off the ice and snow.

You’re trembling. You’re not cold. _I... Yes. Skydive?_

 _He’s got a path_. Warmth, pressure, a shadow over the cavern walls -- Air Raid at your other side. _Without underground abysses, even._

Your wings flick once, erratic and numb. Skydive’s optics find your own. _Graham will appreciate that._

_I thought he might. Here-- you’re going to hate me, but Slings needs to go ahead._

_Smaller_ , Fireflight adds, a touch too fragile for his usual airiness. _Finally reaping the benefits of looking like a beta class._

 _Yeah, and a beta pede up your exhaust would still be mighty uncomfortable, I bet._ Slingshot’s already stepping away, carefully treading southward, pushing smaller ice formations out of the way. He turns on the myriad of little lights around his frame, and all of you follow suit until it’s bright enough for Graham to see as well. _Primus_ frag _, even_ I’m _getting the signal at this point._

“So we’re not going the tumble-y way, I take it”, Graham says, and you instinctively run a scan over him, checking for injuries from your slide underground.

“Not this time, I’m afraid.”

His eyes scan you back, in a way. “Are you?”

Your field falters, for a moment, hope and despair and _longing_ all but bursting from your seams. Air Raid walks a little closer, even as you get your field under control again.

 _Terrified_ , you want to admit, but then--

_\-- quiet words close to your audios -- warm blue optics and the gentlest hands--_

Your words die unvoiced, and this time your brothers can’t stop you.

**_Silverbolt--!_ **

_\-- my life my spark my stars my **love** \--_

The click of Graham’s comm, “I’m fine, we’re fine, just let him--”

_\-- silly, you chide, and laughter rings in your audios and fizzes through your systems, electric-sweet --_

“ _Graham_ , _grab the seat--_!”

_\-- smoke and fire and white and blue --_

You barrel shoulder-first into a wall of rock and ice, stumble to your knees, your pedes--

 

 

 _Warmth_.

 

 

The world stops.

Graham’s breath hitches, just loud enough to break the manacles of shock around your wrists.

“Let me out”, he says quietly. You release the hatch of your cockpit, curve your hand under it so he can climb out. “Over there? Seems safe enough.”

Obeying is easy, mechanical -- you trust him, and so you place him atop the tallest pile of icy debris, running a quick scan to check structural stability. Your optics don’t move for a second. “I…”

“Go.” The words are soft; his eyes, you know, must be even softer. Your brothers are near; you’re trembling again.

He’s covered in ice, his entire lower body and right upper side completely trapped in an opaque cage, chained to the earth underneath. His optics are offline, and you can’t feel his field but you can feel his _spark_.

_Oh love--_

His torso is blackened and burnt, his wings torn and warped in several places. There’s a wound on the side of his face that’s bright even in the dim light of your optics and frame, and you realise a fuel line must have been torn along with the plating where his cheek-spar used to be.

Your hands are shaking. He’s wounded worse than you’ve ever seen him, shot and burnt and covered in blots of congealed energon, but he’s--

He’s _alive_ , he’s alive and bare metres away from you for the first time in nearly an era, and you’re absolutely _terrified_ to touch him.

You hear a series of distressed noises as your brothers appear at the cave’s entrance, feel the ghost of Fireflight’s hand clutching Air Raid’s -- none of you can hide right now, not with your spark bare and reaching like this.

 _Tell me it’s real_ , you manage, though whether you say it with words or thoughts is far beyond you, _tell me_ \--

 _You tell us_ , Slingshot says, and then there are hands on the middle of your wings, not so much pushing as reassuring, encouraging.

You can't look away from his face.

The ground is cold as you fall to your knees, little kinetic pinpricks as your shields crush the smaller shards of ice under your frame, and it has to be real -- how can it not when it feels _so much_ \--?

You offline your optics, lips trembling as you struggle not to fall apart.

You press your forehead to his.

 

 

_\--fire--light--pain--cold--terror-- **falling** \--silverbolt-- **silverbolt** \-- **SILVERBOLT** \--_

 

 

It’s like rebirth.

(You would know. You’ve lived it more than once.)

“I’m here-- Skyfire, _Skyfire_ , I’m _here_ ”, you promise desperately, voice completely _wrecked_ and oh, his _optics_ and his touch and the _feel_ of him, and you’re crying, or maybe laughing, you have no idea what’s going on except for the way his good arm pulls you close, impossibly, _wonderfully_ close, and the sound of his voice--

“ _Silverbolt_ ”, he says, static piercing it through, and his optics are pained but they’re clear, relief taking over the edge of fear like the waves at sea, and your brothers tear at the ice around you both until he can at least sit up, his arms wrapping around you like you’re both _drowning_ , and maybe you are, but you can’t bring yourself to care when your name’s on his lips and his hands on your frame, “Lifesong, I thought-- the AllSpark, I _had to_ \--”

“I know”, you whisper, optics offlining as an era’s worth of grieving crashes into you. “I know, love. It’s going to be alright.”

Finally, after so long, you're certain of it.

 

 

 

 

 _ **Bonus**_ :

“I think”, Graham says, swinging from the railing to plop down onto your knee, "I finally found it."

You tilt your helm at the datapad on his hand. "It?"

" _Coal'cent_ ", Graham chirps, his voice like gravel just from the one word, and Skyfire is startled so much by his use of Cybertronian -- however atrocious and sparkling-oriented -- that his wings smack into your torso. “Ooh, ouch. But yeah, Hannah may have helped. A lot.”

"I-- Sorry”, Skyfire apologises, running a hand over your side, then threading your fingers together. “It’s just--he even has your _accent_.”

Graham clears his throat, smirks. “To be fair, I have an accent even in English.”

Your wings flick, maybe a little slyly. “Also, his French is appalling.”

“Oh, funny”, Graham grumbles, but his eyes are sparkling up at you both. “Wanna look at this, or not?”

You nod, and Skyfire leans against you to peer at the tiny datapad. At a tap of Graham’s fingers the screen comes online, giving shape to a slightly pixelated render of a man at the head of an auditorium.

“ _Look at any landscape photograph_ ”, come the words, the audio about as clear as the video itself. The man is pacing, measured and deliberate, a decisive blur that reminds you keenly of Ratchet. “ _You see the shape of things, the mountains and trees and buildings, but not the sky. Perceptions are the products of complex interactions among various stimuli, which come together to form a reality of their own -- separate from its elements, other than the sum of its parts_.”

“ _Gestalt"_ , he says, absolute, fierce, " _is not a principle of addition. The whole has an independent existence_."

Skyfire’s optic ridges raise, the same flash of recognition as your own. There are more words, after, but they all mean the same thing -- and it's _right_ , after all this time; it's everything you couldn't find a way to say all these past months.

You smile, and your spark feels bright enough to blind.

**Author's Note:**

> Fake conference pieced together from several quotes by Kurt Koffka, one of the first proposers of the gestalt psychology theory. Agent Graham shows up (however briefly) in Revenge of the Fallen, and since he's both Air Force and not associated with any particular Autobot, I decided to borrow him for this story. (Also, whoever can spot the mystery pairings for Slingshot and Skydive gets a drabble of their choice. :P)


End file.
